BWE wrote:Sure. Have you ever played with Conway's game of life?
Eta: https://playgameoflife.com/

Yes
The example you show does not evolve it is stuck in a holding pattern

very much don't agree with this. Biological evolution is not like the others - it doesn't fit neatly into a category consisting of stellar and galactic evolution. It only works semantically because the term 'evolution' means change over time and in that way is applicable to all. But there is no fitness landscape for solar systems, galaxies etc., just as their intrinsic constitutional differentiation doesn't get inherited selectively into future iterations.

Evolution = change over time. By what mechanism your change over time?

Absolutely no evidence of a "mechanism" when the protoplanetary disc produced our solar system?

Nothing descended down through time, nothing became modified, the nature of the modification was not stored in the material itself, ....and so on.

Did our solar system evolve thrower, by means of a type of selection?

I see the portolantary disc as an island understanding.

Paul.

No inheretence, no species to recognise. n
No distinct types of planets no inheretence takes place.... crazy.


Paul.

BWE wrote:

pfrankinstein wrote:

BWE wrote:Paul, do you think there is a problem with our understanding of the process of biological evolution that could be improved upon by a different understanding?

As new data presents itself it should be tested, if the new data better fits the observed evidence, then the mainframe should mutate.

Science itself evolves by the mechanism.

Good test for the forum.

Paul.

.

So, do you believe that there is new data to test? On the same topic, do you think there is data that doesn't fit the theory of biological evolution?

BWE, if we surf then there is a reason in science to teach your children to be good.

Paul.

pfrankinstein wrote:
Did our solar system evolve thrower, by means of a type of selection?

If you mean the solar system is shaped by the environment it finds itself in ... Yes!
If you mean Darwinian evolution .... No!

Similarly, for the moon, it is shaped by its environment.

Now what is the moon a replicate of? How did its forbear shape the moon?

Oh, whilst we are at it
Do snowflakes replicate?

romansh wrote:

BWE wrote:Sure. Have you ever played with Conway's game of life?
Eta: https://playgameoflife.com/

Yes
The example you show does not evolve it is stuck in a holding pattern

I included the link just in case you didn't know what it is. The point is that you can see adaptation working in it and also see replication occurring. Replication is just one of many emergent behaviors adaptive systems can develop. The far more generalizable bit is the ability for information to take particular forms that influence other bounded systems in repeating processes. You do not need a huge leap to go to a physical world where autocatalytic sets actually do exist. Life is a particular kind of structure with some quite specific kinds of signal/boundary relationships but the qualifiers that define those kinds are matters of degree rather than of kind. Incidentally, Conway's gol is Turing complete.

BWE wrote:
I included the link just in case you didn't know what it is. The point is that you can see adaptation working in it and also see replication occurring. Replication is just one of many emergent behaviors adaptive systems can develop. The far more generalizable bit is the ability for information to take particular forms that influence other bounded systems in repeating processes. You do not need a huge leap to go to a physical world where autocatalytic sets actually do exist. Life is a particular kind of structure with some quite specific kinds of signal/boundary relationships but the qualifiers that define those kinds are matters of degree rather than of kind. Incidentally, Conway's gol is Turing complete.

If I remember correctly in Conway's GoL the rules for growth don't change. Am I right?
So, by definition there cannot be any evolution. There is no replication per se .... just unchanging rules for growth

Don't get me wrong it is a great demo for life, but not Darwinian evolution.

I am not sure what you are referring to. There absolutely is replication of bounded systems, there are even gliders that act like viruses and other kinds of information carriers.

Here is the first YouTube hit. There are thousands of unique examples
https://youtu.be/A8B5MbHPlH0

BWE wrote:

pfrankinstein wrote:thrower to make sense of chaos through gross simplification.snip

A scientist useing the word "evolve" "evolved" "evolution" without any inclination to mechanism or types of selection is also an example of gross simplification.

Asleep. Without insight.

Paul.

Evolution is universal though. The mechanisms are generalizable.

I hold with the theory that Evolution is universal. A protodisc being an island perspactive/theory/example of the large.

Paul.



Paul.

BWE wrote:https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Replicator

I'm sure you are a legend in somebody's mind.

Paul.

pfrankinstein wrote:

BWE wrote:https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Replicator

I'm sure you are a legend in somebody's mind.

Paul.

Undoubtedly

romansh wrote:

BWE wrote:
I included the link just in case you didn't know what it is. The point is that you can see adaptation working in it and also see replication occurring. Replication is just one of many emergent behaviors adaptive systems can develop. The far more generalizable bit is the ability for information to take particular forms that influence other bounded systems in repeating processes. You do not need a huge leap to go to a physical world where autocatalytic sets actually do exist. Life is a particular kind of structure with some quite specific kinds of signal/boundary relationships but the qualifiers that define those kinds are matters of degree rather than of kind. Incidentally, Conway's gol is Turing complete.

If I remember correctly in Conway's GoL the rules for growth don't change. Am I right?
So, by definition there cannot be any evolution. There is no replication per se .... just unchanging rules for growth

Don't get me wrong it is a great demo for life, but not Darwinian evolution.

Suppose the big bang counts as the "common anscester". Would that be a Darwinian proposal?

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Archimedes

Paul, you could try making sense. I mean, the alternative hasn't worked. You've got nothing to lose.

romansh wrote:

pfrankinstein wrote:
Did our solar system evolve thrower, by means of a type of selection?

If you mean the solar system is shaped by the environment it finds itself in ... Yes!
If you mean Darwinian evolution .... No!

Similarly, for the moon, it is shaped by its environment.

Now what is the moon a replicate of? How did its forbear shape the moon?

Oh, whilst we are at it
Do snowflakes replicate?

Your not looking for evolution you are looking for biological evolution.

Quite a large chapter biological evolution when you weigh it up.

Complex in nature. Should the forerunner process exhibit primitives, Basic Archaeology.

Almost unrelateable at a glance.

Paul.

BWE wrote:Paul, you could try making sense. I mean, the alternative hasn't worked. You've got nothing to lose.

https://youtu.be/OJvQJl43qBM

Paul.

pfrankinstein wrote: Your not looking for evolution you are looking for biological evolution.

Paul, what I am trying to describe to you is evolution which includes biology but is not limited to biology.
One more time. To have evolution we must have all three of the following
1) A system that replicates
2) The replicates are similar but not identical
3) An environment where some replicates replicate preferentially

If a system has these three things, then we will have evolution in the Darwinian sense.
Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene proposed memes as replicators that meet this definition.

When you use the word "evolve", it is as though you might say a story evolves in a book. This is not how people use the term in a scientific sense. Even mentioning Darwin in this context will get you a lot of up-hill.

The universe unfolding from the "big bang" may indeed be one process, and this process may shape evolution. But it definitely is not evolution in any sensible discussion.

BWE wrote:I should probably give a better response than that. Sure biological evolution is different, although a fitness landscape does shape a solar system and a planet.

But you've straight away reached for metaphor again. A fitness landscape is the relationship between genotype and reproductive success - solar systems and planets do not fail or succeed to reproduce, and there's no analogous varied pool of genetic traits to compete for success. Whether a star dies and collapses or spits out its guts that can eventually go on to be the constituent parts of other stars, none of this is at all analogous to biology.

BWE wrote:But the point of saying that it is all part of the same kind of process is that wherever the right kind of complexity emerges, there is a sweet spot in an energy gradient where complexity begins to produce adaptive behavior.

I don't disagree that all manner of systems can become adaptive. But despite some similarities, a system's adaptive behavior just isn't analogous at all. Suns don't iteratively become better suited to their environments, planets don't preferentially iterate their successful constituent parts into later iterations. The sun or planet themselves may change, but that's not biological evolution wherein it's not the extant individual's adaption that's relevant, but the traits it passes to its offspring.

BWE wrote:If simple life is the beginning of autopoeisis, it certainly isn't the end point. At the point where biological evolution begins, ever more complex self regulating entities emerge at higher levels. So cells become organisms, organisms become communities, societies, markets, biospheres, and so on. Each level is definable by the information it processes, as well as the information it externalizes. That process of signals and boundaries works at levels below as well. Drawing the line at autopoeisis is like drawing a line at a certain number of sand grains defining a heap.

I cannot stress how flawed I consider this.

I agree with everything up to the last sentence which seems to just attempt to simply dismiss the very thing that's wholly distinctive of life and which sets it apart from all the other systems you might want to set it up to be analogous to.

It's not 'drawing a line' at autopoesis, it's that none of the other systems possess this quality, and it being of such vital significance to life, and expressly how and why biological evolution occurs, I don't think it's reasonable at all to do so.

BWE wrote:The analogy would be when a pile becomes unstable and begins to have avalanches. It kind of makes sense in that there could be reasons to draw such a line, but it also makes a different analysis seem "other" when the whole system may be better understood for some purposes as the elements which produce criticality or as the interactions from which it emerges.

I think a general systems theory is a perfectly reasonable approach to interrogating nature, and I think life, in the abstract, can be conceived through this lens. But I also believe that a general systems theory wouldn't attempt to analogize the evolution of life and the adaptive behavior of a weather system because of the stark difference in compositional elements. No weather system, avalanche, planet or any other non-living thing has the 3 core ingredients necessary for biological evolution: compositional variation, inheritance and differential survival.

Even where the compositional variation of a system confers some parameter we can measure, there's no fitness landscape for it to compete in and iteratively confer its survivable composition to new generations. A cyclone's composition may mean it fizzles out quickly or continues on for days crossing vast tracts of land - which one represents a 'success' in evolutionary terms? There is no relationship between the composition of a 'successful' cyclone (however we deem that) and the characteristics of future cyclones - there's nothing linking them at all as they are provoked by extrinsic factors.

On the whole, I am not opposed at all to talking about adaptive systems, and I think you've got a lot of insight into them from a valuable angle - but this metaphor is past stretched; it's borked. There's no valid metaphor here likening weather, avalanches, solar systems etc. to biological evolution - the relationship is purely semantic.

pfrankinstein wrote:thrower Common ancestor in biology has a meaning Paul. Physical forces are not 'common ancestors'. snip

Paul, you have no excuse to keep failing to click the quote button.

pfrankinstein wrote:I use the word "ancestor" as a metaphor.  

Yes, I know. You can tell that by the fact that I keep pointing out that you are using metaphors, but that those metaphors are flawed.

pfrankinstein wrote:Charles Darwin proposed "the common ancestor" of species for biology.

*yawn*

I have forgotten more than you'll ever know about what Darwin said - nothing Darwin said is relevant to what you're saying, and you don't bolster your claims by referring to Darwin.

pfrankinstein wrote:Charles Darwin proposed a "tree of life." Note the single trunk and the branching form.

Yes, and Darwin was basically wrong in this instance, albeit wrong in a useful way.

The Tree of Life metaphor is only a fraction of the picture, and it's understandable how he might misinterpret this idea, considering he wasn't even aware of the unit of inheritance, so the idea that parts of these units of inheritance could come from other species, that the unit itself is comprised of units of inheritance from other species, from entirely different kingdoms of life.

And when we talk about what X person in the past said, it behooves us to ensure we're accurately representing them, because Darwin, despite his ignorance of so many vital elements to understand this system, still conceived of how complex this relationship may be by describing it as more like a "tangled bank"

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.

pfrankinstein wrote:So yes, I propose the big bang. A single beginning denotes a single process.

As I've explained to you dozens of times, one of the many differences between what Darwin did and what you've not done which makes you repeated attempts to liken yourself to Darwin specious, is that Darwin built his ideas on the back of observations, whereas you cannot even after years of theatre produce so much as a single observation which necessitates your idea as an explanation.

pfrankinstein wrote:I propose the BB as the first "common ancestor." Note the trunk and the branching form..

You've latched onto a 19th century concept that no longer has any currency in the modern understanding.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05827-1

In The Tangled Tree, celebrated science writer David Quammen tells perhaps the grandest tale in biology: how scientists used gene sequencing to elucidate the evolutionary relationships between living beings. Charles Darwin called it the ‘great Tree of Life’. But as Quammen reveals, at the molecular level, life’s history is more accurately depicted as a network, a tangled web through which organisms have been exchanging genes for more than 3 billion years.

That molecular level is where inheritance is happening, it's where the form of the organism is founded, it's how evolution occurs.

My guess based on all you've written here is that your 'tree' really is just another way of saying: before this, because of this i.e. the banal bit which provides not a jot of support for your contentions.

pfrankinstein wrote:very much don't agree with this. Biological evolution is not like the others - it doesn't fit neatly into a category consisting of stellar and galactic evolution. It only works semantically because the term 'evolution' means change over time and in that way is applicable to all. But there is no fitness landscape for solar systems, galaxies etc., just as their intrinsic constitutional differentiation doesn't get inherited selectively into future iterations.

Evolution = change over time. By what mechanism your change over time?

Absolutely no evidence of a "mechanism" when the protoplanetary disc produced our solar system?

Nothing descended down through time, nothing became modified, the nature of the modification was not stored in the material itself, ....and so on.

Did our solar system evolve thrower, by means of a type of selection?

I see the portolantary disc as an island understanding.

Paul.

No inheretence, no species to recognise. n
No distinct types of planets no inheretence takes place.... crazy.


Paul.

Learn to use quotes - especially when you're engaging in self-gratification. Such low levels of competence in such an elementary task don't support your proclamations of brilliance.

Fix it if you want a reply.